Exact Bounds on the Contact Driven Motion of a Sliding Object, With Applications to Robotic Pulling

Authors: Eric Huang, Ankit Bhatia, Byron Boots, Matthew Mason

This paper explores the quasi-static motion of a planar slider being pushed or pulled through a single contact point assumed not to slip. The main contribution is to derive a method for computing exact bounds on the object’s motion for classes of pressure distributions where the center of pressure is known but the distribution of support forces is unknown. The second contribution is to show that the exact motion bounds can be used to plan robotic pulling trajectories that guarantee convergence to the final pose. The planner was tested on the task of pulling an acrylic rectangle to random locations within the robot workspace. The generated plans were accurate to 4.00mm +- 3.02mm of the target position and 4.35 degrees +- 3.14 degrees of the target orientation.